Flicker in the Wind
As my wife stands at the stove
a bird thuds against the window
and flops into the top branches
of the dogwood buffeted by wind.
Then a northern flicker with dark
dots on her light belly rights herself
onto the window ledge and looks
in at us looking back out at her.
“You will be okay!” I say softly as she
turns sideways looking at me. “You
will be okay.” She shows bright red
on the back of her head and black
eyes and spots on tan feathers. She
comes closer and closer to the window
to see and hear us better. She is calm.
Katherine lets her walk into the camera
eye leaving us with images of her coming
through our window before balance and strength
return lifting her back into her airy world
with images of us soaring away with her.
Norbert Krapf is a former Indiana Poet Laureate. His most recent of fourteen collections are Indiana Hill Country Poems (2019) and Southwest by Midwest (2020), both from Dos Madres Press. His chapbook of fourteen children’s poems, “Peyton Potter Rides His Unicorn,” is out from New Feral Press. This year his Homecomings: A Writer's Memoir will appear.